


Sand Giving Way to Bedrock

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Archer, Battle-Mage, Trickster, and Warrior [7]
Category: Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, GFY, Post-Movie(s), gratuitous abuse of mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you holding up all right?"</p><p>It's a question that Clint would normally hear from Phil or Natasha, or even Anna. To hear it from Steve rattles him a little. "Mostly." It's as close to the truth as he's willing to get. "Just wondering how this is my life. It's kinda weird, you know?"</p><p>A lopsided smile crosses Steve's face a moment. "Yeah. It is." He doesn't add anything else, just leaves it at that, and Clint relaxes a fraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand Giving Way to Bedrock

The roof is probably not the best place to go to escape everything right now, but it's open air and freedom, and away from everyone else. Clint knows he should go back inside soon, should go find something to eat, but after talking to Anna and to Phil, neither of whom are really quite the people he'd come to know and respect and love, if in different manners, he needed the chance to be alone.

He's actually surprised Natasha hasn't come up to check on him, but it's comforting that she trusts he won't do something stupid. Just think. Just try to figure out how all this became his life, when before it had been so simple. Go where SHIELD told him, annoy Phil with pranks and practical jokes, work on missions with Natasha - and sometimes spend the aftermath of them with her, too - and go to Anna when he could, and wrap himself up in something resembling normal for a week or four.

And perhaps this is just as simple, but he feels like he's getting out of his depth, and needs solid ground under his feet. He'd thought he'd been getting things back together, been coming to terms with the idea, even, that Anna might be older and more than he thought she was. Then Natasha had called and the sand just washed out from under his feet.

Clint snorts softly at his metaphors, and runs a hand through his hair. Gods and aliens and superheroes and magic, and maybe zombie-Phil - though with a distinct lack of craving for human brains; it's all just a bit much to take in, but he'll find his way to solid footing. He just needs time, and he still, officially, has another three weeks, possibly more.

And he can find a way to cope with whatever had been done to Phil, and whatever Anna is beyond herself. Maybe, even, find a way to cope with what had happened when he'd been under Loki's control, though that he's not as certain about, not yet. Maybe not ever.

He can hear the door open behind him, but he doesn't let himself turn, listening to the footsteps as the person approaches. It's not Natasha, and Clint wonders that she hasn't given them all warnings to leave him alone. Of course, that would assume that they'd listen, and Clint doubts any of them really would.

"JARVIS told me where you were." Steve doesn't come too close, just makes sure he's in Clint's peripheral vision before he speaks, and it says something that he can figure out where that is when he's known Clint for little more than a week, not counting the three where their new little team had been off doing their own things.

"Is there something I need to come inside for? You could have just sent Nat to get me." Clint keeps his attention mostly on the panorama of the city spread out before and below him. Still trying to figure out where there might be something to keep him from drowning in whatever his life has become.

"Nothing that anyone told me about." Steve is looking at him, though what he's looking for, Clint doesn't have any idea. He doesn't really know much about the others here other than Nat, save that they'd closed ranks around Phil without any real prompting. Like he's as important to them as he is to Clint and Natasha. "Are you holding up all right?"

It's a question that Clint would normally hear from Phil or Natasha, or even Anna. To hear it from Steve rattles him a little. He draws in a deep breath, a little more sand slipping out from under his feet, but, he thinks, maybe for the better. There's the potential for bedrock there, if he's willing to take the chance on this whole team; he's not foolish enough to think that he can take a chance on one of the others without taking the entire package.

"Mostly." It's as close to the truth as he's willing to get, even if he might just take that chance. They'd treated Phil as one of their own. "Just wondering how this is my life. It's kinda weird, you know?"

A lopsided smile crosses Steve's face a moment. "Yeah. It is." He doesn't add anything else, just leaves it at that, and Clint relaxes a fraction. He's not sure what he'd expected, but that Steve doesn't add his own experiences or one-up Clint is nice.

The silence is just as nice, someone there to listen if he talks, someone he isn't emotionally invested in like he is with Anna or Natasha or Phil. That Steve had been the first person after Natasha to trust him after he'd been hell-bent on killing everyone at Loki's command, if he thinks about it too much, might be why he's the one up here, and not Stark or Banner.

"I don't know if she's dangerous, but I know she's not a danger to us." Clint can trust that about Anna, about Angrboða, even if he doesn't know much about the glimpses of Angrboða behind Anna.

Steve doesn't reply right away, his gaze on the city rather than on Clint. "I trust you. We all do. I don't know her, and we don't have the same sort of situation we did when you first came out from under Loki's mind-control." He's speaking carefully, as though he's choosing his words very carefully. "Even if she's not actively a danger, she could still be a security risk, now. So is Coulson."

Clint lets out a sharp breath, feeling like he's been punched, even though he knows that until they know what brought Phil back, and how what happened to Anna is connected to it. "No one else was effected by the spell or whatever shit that was." He wants to defend Anna, but it's harder than defending Phil.

"That we can tell." Steve looks at him now, the steady resolve in his expression tempered somewhat by the sympathy there as well. "I'm not going to insist we tell Fury, even though I think this might be more than we can handle on our own. But we've all been in the room with Coulson, and we can't know if it's effected us - and I know you'll trust Anna if she says it hasn't touched anyone else, but no one else knows her well enough to take her at her word."

Which is true enough, and Clint doesn't like it, but he nods anyway, taking a deep breath. Sand under his feet, but there has to be bedrock under there somewhere. Steve is trying to look out for him, for all of them, and the rest of them are doing the same. He just has to keep that in mind, and adjust to the idea that he can trust people outside Natasha and Phil and Anna.

"I can't just not trust them." He meets Steve's gaze easily for a moment, before looking away again over the city.

"I know." A smile quirks Steve's lips a moment. "I won't ask you not to trust them. Just trust everyone else, too?"

"Now I know why you're up here instead of Natasha." Clint smirks, finally turning away from the view and walking toward the door inside. Natasha wouldn't ask him to trust the rest of them, because he doesn't know if she actually trusts the rest of them yet, either. They'll both have to work on it, but Clint thinks he'll get there, at least.

Steve snorts, following him. "She isn't taking her attention off Miss Boyd right now, and someone had to talk to you, without making it a big deal."

"Like a debriefing with everyone?" Clint pauses with his hand on the door handle, looking back at Steve with an eyebrow raised.

Steve shrugs. "Debriefing is for after a mission. Whatever's happening, I don't think it's over yet. Might be a good idea if we did get everyone together and make sure we're all on the same page, with the same information."

Clint tilts his head in acknowledgement. "Maybe over dinner?" Something better than the last meal he'd shared with the rest of the team, though that's colored by exhaustion and grief. He might even cook something, since he's not terribly familiar with the take-out available around the tower.

"I'll cook something, and make sure Doctor Banner and Stark are there." Steve's offer is a bit surprising, but Clint nods anyway, opening the door so they can go inside, and downstairs.

Which leaves Clint to get Natasha, and decide if Anna or Phil should be in on the meeting - since they can't have both of them there, not without more risk than he's willing to take. It's something to talk to Phil about, he thinks, and once he and Steve are down the stairs, he heads for medical so he can do that.

* * *

"Good evening, Ms Potts." JARVIS' familiar voice made Pepper smile as she stepped into the elevator that would take her from the garage to the penthouse. "Mr. Stark is in his lab at the moment, and Captain Rogers is currently preparing dinner. Shall I inform him that you will be joining everyone?"

"Please, JARVIS." Since the battle over Manhattan, Tony had been talking about making sure that everyone on the team had a place to stay in the tower, even if they kept apartments or houses or whatever elsewhere. She'd been delighted to find out Steve cooked when he returned to New York, and accepted Tony's offer of an apartment sort of space. "Is there anything else I should know?"

Tony, after all, couldn't be relied on to tell her everything, with his focus on his projects, and his desire to protect her from some of the ugliness that happens in his world. She understands the urge, and finds it almost endearing, when she doesn't find it utterly frustrating. JARVIS has been useful in keeping the moments of the latter to a minimum.

"I have been instructed not to inform anyone of the current status of the upper floors of the tower unless specifically requested to do so by Mr. Stark or Captain Rogers." JARVIS sounds apologetic, though he adds after a brief pause, "Shall I have Agent Romanov meet you when you arrive at the communal floor?"

Natasha might actually tell her what has happened, and why JARVIS isn't allowed to tell even her what's going on. "Please, JARVIS." She smiles up at the ceiling, though now she's worried, because Tony's never prevented JARVIS from informing her about anything that doesn't directly pertain to him - though if this is about him, she's going to have to remind him just why he's not allowed to have important secrets that she's unaware of.

When the doors open, Natasha is waiting, though the expression on her face makes Pepper raise an eyebrow. "Is everything all right?"

"No." Natasha tilts her head in the vague direction of the lounge, and Pepper nods as she steps out of the elevator. "No one's dying, though." There's a quirk of her lips that might normally be a smile, and Pepper returns it with a faint smile of her own.

"What went wrong, then?" Pepper settles onto the couch once in the lounge, as Natasha goes to collect a decanter from the bar, and a pair of glasses. She's not sure what to think, with the delay in reply accompanied by the unspoken suggestion that she should have a drink to hand when given the news.

"I'm not sure." Natasha pours a finger's worth of what smells to be brandy, rather than Tony's scotch, into each glass, and hands one to Pepper. "We found Phil alive a little more than a week ago, at his grave." She meets Pepper's gaze for a moment before looking away. "I called Clint, and he brought his girlfriend with him when he came back. She's. Not entirely human, or something. I don't know."

Pepper takes a sip of the brandy, blinking a moment. She's not sure how to react, either to the news that Phil is alive, or that there's another not-quite-human person in the tower. So she focuses on what she is certain how to react to, though it's not really her business.

"I thought Agent Barton and you were involved?" She raises an eyebrow at Natasha, wondering just how it worked, or if she'd just misread the cues.

"We are." Natasha smiles a bit, and shrugs one shoulder. "It works for us. Clint needs the illusion of normal Anna gives him, from time to time." An illusion that Natasha has a much harder time with, though she can manage it well enough on her own, as Pepper recalls. If she could call working with Tony and her normal, anyway.

Pepper is quiet for a long moment, before she asks, "How is Phil doing?"

"Alive." Natasha knocks back her drink, closing her eyes a moment. "At least, everything that we've tested says he's alive. We can't be sure about that, not now. Even if he is, someone used to him to hurt us."

Pepper frowns, not quite sure what Natasha's talking about, and she's not certain she'd be told, either, if she asked. There's something a bit too personal there, she thinks, though she could ask Phil, if she gets a chance to talk to him.

Natasha opens her eyes again, watching Pepper for a long moment. "It peeled away something of Anna. A mask, maybe. She won't talk about it, not to anyone but Clint. I don't think she trusts anyone else."

"If she's only just met you, that's not really a surprise." Pepper knows she's stating the obvious, but right now, she doesn't know what else to say. "Give her time, and hopefully she'll open up a little."

Giving her a brief, wry smile, Natasha shrugs. "I don't know if it's really worth it for her to open up more than a little. If she's who we think she is, she's as old as Loki or Thor."

* * *

"Do you mind if I tell them all of it?" Clint is leaning against the headboard of the bed, with her curled up against his chest with her feet tucked between his knees. "Everything you told me about Angrboða, even the parts with Loki?"

Anna shrugs, keeping her face buried in the crook of his shoulder. It's calming her, just breathing in the smell of him, and for all that her internal walls are stable now, there are still moments when she feels like they're eroding. Sand running through her fingers as she tries to build with stone.

"Whatever they need to know, to protect each other and Earth." She closes her eyes, wondering for a moment what he'd already told them, what he'd told his friend. "If all of it will help, then yes, tell them. But if you must tell them of Loki, you must tell them of after Loki, as well."

"So they don't get the impression he might drop in on you and you'd let him in?" She feels the quiet snort more than hears it. "You'd probably drop him faster than I would."

"But not kill him. He still owes me answers, and I do not trust that the stories that were told of my children are true." She doesn't understand how anyone could imagine treating children like that, even ones with strange talents like her children.

"At least a little bit of one is true." Clint presses a kiss to her temple, hesitating a moment, and she Anna tilts her head back to look at him. He's worried, staring off into the distance rather than meeting her gaze. "Hel talked to Phil before he came back. I kinda wonder if she did whatever it was that hurt you."

The idea that her daughter would harm her makes Anna's blood run cold, though it doesn't hurt as much as she expects that it should. "I have been parted from my children too long, if one of them would do that." She turns her face back into the crook of Clint's shoulder. "If one would deliberately try to harm me."

Clint's arms tighten around her a moment, and Anna takes a deep breath, anchoring herself again. Silence surrounds them for several long minutes, a familiar and welcome calm that's broken by a knock on the door.

"That's probably dinner ready." Clint presses another kiss to her temple before they extricate themselves from each other, though Clint does pull her close in beside him while going to answer the door.

Banner's on the other side, a brief smile crossing his face before he tilts his head slightly toward the common area. "Rogers sent me to tell you dinner's almost ready." A task, Anna is certain, that could be carried out by the AI that inhabits the tower, the JARVIS who'd been one of those watching over Clint while she was unconscious.

"Yeah. Thought as much. I'll be there in a moment." Clint returns the smile with one of his own, easy and lopsided and not entirely true. It's enough for Banner, though, and he walks away in the direction Clint will have to go in a moment. "You sure you'd rather be here?"

"I'll be all right, love." Anna leans up to press a kiss to his lips. "JARVIS will be monitoring me, and your friend is far enough away that whatever is wrapped about him cannot do anything to rip at my psyche."

"Yeah, I know." Clint gives her a brief smile after a moment, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. "I'll bring you back a plate after."

"Thank you." Anna steps back, shooing him toward the door, and keeping her gentle smile up until she's closed the door behind him. Then, she slumps against the door, closing her eyes. Silent for a long moment before she asks, "JARVIS, are you allowed to deliver a message to Coulson from me? Without first alerting anyone else to the message and its contents?"

"I'm afraid not, Miss Boyd." The distinctly British tones of the AI sound faintly apologetic, and Anna can't help but smile, a twist of the lips that doesn't hold much amusement.

"It's all all right. I'll have someone else take the message to him later, then." If he has spoken with her daughter, if that much of the stories she's tried so hard to ignore are true...

She slides down the door, resting her head against her knees as she wraps her arms around them. The hurt that would not come earlier, when Clint mentioned it, hits now that she's alone in the room, and behind it, a wash of anger - deep, cold rage that she had thought faded with the centuries. "She was my little girl, my most beloved child, Loki," she whispered, taking a deep breath to try to contain the anger.

Anna's not aware of the seeping, spreading frost making intricate patterns across the floor and up the walls and the door behind her. Not aware of the chill seeping into her skin until the door behind her rattles and shifts in its new frame of ice. She can hear a muffled curse, can recognize Clint's voice, but it takes her long moments to realize why, or to think to move away from the door.

Not that it allows it to open, thick frost creating patterns across its surface, and the frame warped under a layer of clouded ice. She frowns, trying to figure out how that could happen - even when she's been lost in the depths of her own mind, she's never had ice appear around her that couldn't be attributed to the season. And it's not seiðr-woven ice, either, but real and solid as anything born of winter's cold.

"Anna!" Clint's still outside the door, and Anna opens her mouth to call back, only to have nothing emerge from her mouth. She's not sure if it's anger or fear that steals her voice, and makes her shake, or if it might perhaps be something of both. Shaking her head, she tries to shove the anger away, to draw on the calm that has been so much a part of being Anna.

The door rattles once more in the ice, it or its prison creaking with the force, and Anna takes another step away from it, wrapping her arms around her as she stares at it. She jumps when she hears the clatter of metal behind her, and whirls at the thud of someone dropping to the floor. Watching as Clint looks to the door, and then to her, his eyes widening.

"What happened?" He is studying her face like there's something there he's never seen before, and Anna wraps her arms a little more tightly around herself.

"I don't know." Her voice sounds tiny, and it wavers in a way that she doesn't recognize, and doesn't understand. Everything is spiraling out of control and away from the familiar; she should be able to deal with this without falling apart, and she doesn't know why she feels like she's losing her grip on everything. She rebuilt her mental walls, and she hasn't been near Coulson since - hasn't seen or felt the touch of the strange seiðr since she woke.

Clint's arms are wrapped around her shoulders, her face buried in his shoulder, familiar scent filling her nose and grounding her, if not as well as she thinks it should. There are other voices, and a shattering sound that makes her shudder. Ice or the door, it doesn't matter, only that it leaves an opening that Clint guides her out through, pulling her toward the elevators. She's not quite sure where they're going, but she follows, more docile than she thinks she's been since she was a child.

* * *

Anna's lack of resistance as Clint takes her down, toward the reinforced safe room Tony had apparently installed in the basement, is as worrying as the blue tint to her skin and red in her once-grey eyes when Clint had gotten to her. He murmurs to her that they'll figure this out, they'll find out what was done to her, but she doesn't respond, only keeps herself nestled as close to his side as she can manage.

The safe room is comfortable enough, and Anna doesn't object when he leaves her in there, in a room that could easily become a prison cell. He'd only agreed to the suggestion to move her down here because it's as far away as she can be from Phil while still being in the Tower rather than in SHIELD custody - and he has no illusions that if she's not here, SHIELD will take her into custody, if they hear about everything that's happened in the last week and a half.

"Is she all right?" Pepper is the first one he runs into when he emerges from the elevator, her expression openly worried. She'd looked surprised when JARVIS had interrupted the barely-begun dinner with a polite report.

_Miss Boyd appears to be to be experiencing a drop in body temperature, as well as some distress._

"I don't know." Clint runs a hand through his hair, holding back the automatic response that how could she be all right, she's been attacked and we can't even tell what damage it did or if it's still happening. "Everyone else still at the room?"

Pepper nods, and falls in beside him as he heads back toward the room that had been his. Clint doesn't think he's going to be staying in there longer than it takes Stark to decide he's better off elsewhere. Not that Clint really cares, so long as he has someplace to sleep. If he sleeps.

His steps slow as he catches sight of the door once more, off its hinges and out of the warped frame. The ice that lays shattered on the floor, and thick around the frame and across part of the wall. That had been surrounding where Anna had slid to the floor after he'd left for dinner, apparently.

"Barton." Natasha's voice makes him focus on her, and she watches him for a moment before nodding. She doesn't really need to say anything, just the quirk of eyebrows and the hint of determination about her eyes and mouth reassuring him that they'll figure this out, and they'll fix it if it can be fixed.

He draws in a deep breath, returning her nod, and following her into the room, where Tony and Bruce are already talking in terms that Clint mostly ignores and pretends not to understand when he's paying attention.

"Will you be all right?" Steve isn't trying to contribute to Tony and Bruce's discussion of how it's even possible for the ice to exist and in the amount and pattern it does. He's watching Clint instead, concern in his expression, though Clint doesn't think for a minute that it's all for his well-being.

"Eventually." Clint doesn't know if he will or won't be, but he'll be able to do his job, and he won't snap, and that's all most of them have to know. Natasha or Phil would probably call bullshit, and he can see something in Steve's expression that says Steve is tempted to do so as well, but he doesn't. Which at the moment, Clint is grateful for.

Steve looks away from Clint, and at the ice, a frown on his face as he thinks. "We need to try to get a hold of Thor."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this story took so long - I had my wisdom teeth removed and spent a long weekend spaced out dealing with the pain.


End file.
